The present invention generally relates to a remote control technique and a vehicle with a remote-controllable function, and more particularly, to a technique for operating vehicle equipment remotely in response to a request from a handy or mobile terminal device manipulated by a user of the vehicle.
Conventionally, a remote control system, which includes a control center, a vehicle with prescribed equipment (e.g., power door lock/unlock), and a mobile terminal to be manipulated by a user of the vehicle, is known. See, for example, JP-A 2003-41821. In this system, when a request for activating vehicle equipment is input to the mobile terminal by the user of the vehicle, a request signal is transmitted to the control center. Upon receiving the request signal, the center transmits a driving signal to the vehicle to activate the vehicle equipment provided that a prescribed condition is satisfied. Then the driving signal causes the vehicle equipment to operate. With this system, the vehicle equipment can be operated remotely simply by manipulating the mobile terminal even if the user of the vehicle is away from the vehicle.
The prescribed condition to be satisfied to transmit a driving signal from the control center to the vehicle is, for example, whether permission for operating the vehicle equipment has been acquired in advance from the owner of the vehicle. Accordingly, as long as the permission has been obtained, the center transmits the driving signal in response to every request from the mobile terminal. Some problems arise from this arrangement.
Multiple activation requests conflicting with each other may be made to the same vehicle equipment, or the same driving signal is transmitted repeatedly to the vehicle in response to requests from different mobile terminals. In addition, when the mobile terminal makes a request for operating particular vehicle equipment, that equipment may be actually in use in the vehicle. If, in such situations, a driving signal is transmitted from the center in response to every activation request, vehicle equipment may be operated in an undesirable manner contrary to the intention of a person who is actually using the equipment in the vehicle or a person who has remotely requested a particular operation of that vehicle equipment. What is worse is that the person who is actually using the equipment or the person who has made a remote control request may not recognize that the unwanted operation is occurring.